Storyline: Elisa Esposito was rendered mute by a neck injury she had sustained as an infant, and communicates using sign language. Living alone in an apartment above a movie theater, she works as a janitor at a secret government laboratory in Baltimore during the Cold War in the early 1960s. Her two closest friends are her next door neighbor Giles, who is an artist and closeted gay man, and Zelda, an African-American co-worker who also serves as her interpreter at work.